Open Dialect - Open source Flash IDE

Open Dialect is an open source Flash IDE based on Flex. It's written in C# using .Net 2.0 framework. They call it Dynamic Inter-Active Learning Environment Creation Tool. The software is meant for creating interactive learning Environments.

To know in detail about the this open source flash IDE, Follow the Open Dialect wiki here.

Below is the screenshot of open Dialect IDE.



More screenshots are available here.

Open Dialect 0.1.1 is available for Windows but they are porting it on Linux and OSX using MONO and GTK+.

The available demo for showing the capabilities of Open Dialect is here.

References:-

Open Dialect
Open Dialect HomePage
Open Dialect Main Website

RTMP - Protocol Flavours

With the development of Adobe flash media server and Red5 flash server new protocols are also coming in picture.
Here are some protocols for streaming of Audio/Video using Flash media server and Red5.

RTMP Real Time Messaging Protocol

RTMP is a TCP based propriety protocol developed by Adobe System for the purpose of streaming Audio/Video data between Flash Player and media server.

RTMPT Real Time Messaging Protocol with Tunnel

RTMPT is a variation of RTMP which works behind the firewall as well. It works on Port 80 and encapsulate the RTMP data in HTTP request.

RTMPS Real Time Messaging Protocol Secure

RTMPS is again a variation of RTMP which works over secure HTTPS connection.

RTMPE Real Time Messaging Protocol with Encryption

RTMPE is a new 128 bit encrypted protocol developed by Adobe systems for securing the stream data between flash client and server. It's lightweight than SSL.
It's a DRM solution from Adobe for flash.

RTMPTE Real Time Messaging Protocol with Encryption and Tunnel

RTMPTE is a RTMPE tunneling over HTTP on port 80.

MRTMP Multiplex Real Time Messaging protocol

Multiplex RTMP is a protocol between edge and origin, developed by Red5 for clustering of stream data using Terracotta.

Related Post
H.264 On RTMP

Adobe Flash Media Rights Management Server

Adobe has relased Adobe Flash Media Rights Managment server. It's a platform to protect the media contents delivered to Adobe Media Player and Adobe AIR™ applications.
It's a DRM( Digital Rights Managment ) solution for Flash Video.

Some of the features of Adobe Flash Media Rights Managment server are listed below-

Cross-platform content delivery
Protect media content delivered to Adobe® Media Player and Adobe AIR™ applications.

Content protection with Adobe Media Player
ensure the integrity of your content when you deliver it to Adobe Media Player users.

Offline access auditing
Track usage of your content when viewed through Adobe Media Player, even when consumers are offline.

For detail list of features, visit Adobe website here.
To know in detail about this new server follow the article of Tim Siglin here.


References:-

Adobe Flash Media Rights Management Server
Adobe Offers DRM for Flash Video with Flash Media Rights Management Server
Flash Media Rights Management Server Announced (and Released)

Red5 0.7.0 complete Changelog and Bugfixes

Red5 Changelog
----------------------------------------------------------

Red5 v0.7.0 final 02.23.2008

New Features:

- Initial Edge/Origin clustering support for multiple Edges with a single
Origin (Jira APPSERVER-66)
- Added stream listeners that can get notified about received packets
- Support for server-side Javascript (Jira APPSERVER-169)
- Added new base class org.red5.server.adapter.MultiThreadedApplicationAdapter
that allows multiple clients to connect simultaneously to the same
application
- Added new Flash Player 9 statuses NetStream.Play.FileStructureInvalid and
NetStream.Play.NoSupportedTrackFound
- New Flex admin tool (Jira APPSERVER-242)

Bugfixes:

- Pause near end of buffered streams works as expected (Jira APPSERVER-199)
- Fixed potential memory leak with RTMPT connections that are not properly
closed (Jira APPSERVER-193)
- "onMetaData" is only written to newly recorded FLV files and contains
valid properties now
- Don't try to decode objects for closed RTMPT connections
(Jira APPSERVER-208)
- New multi-threaded connection code fixes various timeout issues
(Jira APPSERVER-122, Jira APPSERVER-166 and Jira APPSERVER-167)
- Always use correct classloader inside applications (Jira APPSERVER-200)
- Tomcat cannot undeploy red5 application (Jira APPSERVER-204)
- "ByteArray" objects used old data after calling "compress" or "uncompress"
(Jira APPSERVER-211)
- "@DontSerialize" checks for properties also in inherited classes
(Jira APPSERVER-225)
- Enabled bidirectional class serialization (Jira APPSERVER-219)
- Array typed parameters in remoting service methods converted properly
(Jira APPSERVER-161)

References:-

http://jira.red5.org/secure/Dashboard.jspa
http://osflash.org/red5/070final

Terracotta - Network Attached Memory

Another great software from open source.

Few days back I wrote here about Red5 load balancing using Terracotta .
In this post I will write little bit about Terracotta technology.

Terracotta is an open source JVM clustering software for Java.It means the applications running on multiple JVMs are capable to interact with each other as they are running on a same JVM.

They call it-
Network Attached Memory: Purpose Built To Store "Scratch Data".

Terracotta is useful in following scenarios:-

1:- HTTP Session Clustering
2:- Distributed Caching
3:- POJO Clustering/Spring integration
4:- Hibernate Caching
5:- Inter-JVM Coordination
6:- Collaboration, Coordination and Events
7:- Distributed workload distribution
8:- Virtual heap for large dataset

To know more about Terracotta follow the link here or watch very impressive demo here.

References:-

1:- Terracotta official website
2:- Terracotta Wiki
3:- Introduction to Terracotta with Example
4:- Terracotta Tech- Cluster your JVM- The Video
5:- Using Terracotta To Cluster a Single JVM Master/Worker Application

H.264 on RTMP

Today morning i got a news here on red5 mailing list about the implementation of H.264 on RTMP by a Japanese guy.
The blog is in Japanese. Below are the links for detail information on this.

Feed Demo Page (English compatible click once to enable audio)
http://vixy.tv/izumi-h264/

Programmer's blog (written in Japanese)
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/takuma104/20080317/1205783390

Demo Video on Server Start
http://vixy.tv/images/izumi_h264_demo.mp4

Now its time for Red5 team to comeup with H.264 solution.

Hope to hear it soon :)

Red5 offline Tutorials-Download pdfs here

Below is the offline version of many great Red5 tutorials so that you do not need to be online more to read them again.

1:- Create new Java Red5 application

2:- Setting up Eclipse for Red5 development

3:- Create sample Red5 application

4:- Shared whiteboard application in red5

5:- Secure your red5 application using stunnel

6:- Red5-How to create New application

7:- How to stream from custom directories

8:- Getting started with Red5

9:- MySql and Red5

10:- Red5 and Flex on windows

11:- Streaming and database connection- Red5

12:- Streaming from custom directories

13:- Tomcat guide of creating new Red5 application

14:- Red5+openlaszlo+Red5

15:- Red5 Project Roadmap

16:- Red5 Documentation

17:- Deploying Red5 to Tomcat

MRTMP- Red5 load balancing

Red5 flash media server released their version 0.7.0 final on 02.23.2008.
The one of the major enhancement was the support of Initial Edge/Origin clustering for multiple Edges with a single Origin.
Everyone who was interested to use Red5 on a large scale was looking for this solution.
I can find many questions in Red5 mailing list and other forums on this topic.
For this red5 has developed a new protocol called MRTMP( Multiplexing RTMP)-protocol between edge and origin.
They are using Terracotta for acheiving this solution.
The detail architecture document can be found here and the implementation with Red5 and terracotta can be found here.
The POC of Red5 and terracotta is here.
After releasing this feature, Red5 team can target huge production environments and Chris Allen has already indicated about this on a post at flashcomguru.

Looking forward for many new great features and enhancements in near future from Red5 team.

Red5 ready for H.264

What is H.264 and why everyone now is talking about this only.
Last year the online media giant YouTube also started showing H.264 contents.Flash media server 3 is supporting H.264 content both live and on demand.
When we talk about FMS, one name also comes in mind and it's Red5, for those who can not go for FMS because of its price.
Red5, for the people who live the open source way.
When Red5 released the v0.7.0, I was discussing in my blog post about the possibility of supporting H.264 in near future by Red5 and few days back i read an article on Flashcomguru about Wowza media server supporting H.264.
The link is here.
I was sure that Red5 team is also working on it. Red5 team always keep doing great things right on time.
So here is a statement from Chris Allen about Red5 supporting H.264 content in response to my comment on wowza supporting H.264 at flashcomguru.

Correct, Red5, or more specifically, our team member Paul Gregoire is working on the h.264 support. This should be done pretty soon. We are releasing Red5 0.7 today or tomorrow, and the h.264 stuff will follow soon thereafter in 0.7.1 .

So cheers for Red5, Everyone is waiting for Red5 v0.7.1. Great efforts from Red5 team.